Big news from my friend, Guillermo Payet, the creator of the brilliant LocalHarvest.org website for consumers looking for farms, CSAs, and more. He and a friend, Megan, are off on a trial run for Bike2Barn...riding their motorcycles to Southern California and visiting farms en route. They're blogging about it, so check it out. Next spring, they're heading out for two months on a cross-country tour of farms.
Speaking of blogging, I have some very helpful information. A friend showed me how to use Bloglines, and I installed a bookmarklet into the toolbar of my browsers that lets me instantly subscribe to any blog or site I like. Once I subscribe, Bloglines lets me know when one of my subscriptions has new content on it. Checking the subscribers of various sites is also really useful: many of them have subscriptions to sites I haven't yet seen, and I've found some great material that way.
If you click a subscribers name, their "feeds" load, and you can click through their list. It's nifty. (This is my current list of subscriptions.)
Secondly, I have started a map for the international food blogging community, and people are adding their markers regularly. I occasionally check the message board, which is a chronological listing of the bloggers, instead of the board itself, to see who's new. I've found some good new blogs, there, too, and the bloggers are very enthusiastic about it.
Bloglines makes it manageable to sift through a lot of sites easily, and I don't have to remember to check in. I am really enjoying it. (It's free to register and use.) I use it for my homepage in one of my browsers, so it's easy to see. Another nifty little feature is that you can add "clippings" to a little folder within your control panel.
Try it out and see if it doesn't improve your internet experience immediately.
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Yesterday at the farmers market, I bought my first-ever kohlrabi, based
on the enthusiasm of both Jasmine and Kirsten, who grow it. "If you
like broccoli stalks, you will love kohlrabi."
So last night, being aware that the finale of Six Feet Under was going to require my attention, I nevertheless wanted to use some of the amazing stuff I got at the farmers market this week. I had two ears of corn, eggplant, kohlrabi, mushrooms, heirloom tomatoes, and basil. And no game plan. I mis en placed the whole business: corn off the cob, chopped everything else, and peeled the kohlrabi, slicing it into big matchsticks. Everything went into bowls: I felt so orderly.
Mushrooms and eggplants went first into the big Calphalon wok with a little olive oil, and those softened up a bit. Next went in four medium-sized Black Krim heirlooms (probably my single favorite tomato, if I had to pick just one) and a cup or so of green and purple basil. After that bubbled down, I threw in the corn. I rummaged around in the refrigerator and found the last of some homemade pesto, and that kind of rounded the whole thing out, along with a little sea salt. I cooked the kohlrabi by itself in a little butter, and some of the juice from the vegetable mélange.
It was just wonderful, all of it. Bob says one of the best things I've ever made, and I think that's because of the quality of the produce. It was a big bowl of summer goodness.
I'm a big believer in being able to taste the love (or other emotion) that goes into food. One time after a particularly brutal experience in Family Court (Bob's X, the little charmer, not mine!), I made a big pot of butternut squash soup, and the whole thing was sour, bordering on rancid, though I am certain I did nothing differently than I always had before. (I'm not one to ruin meals: I can count on one hand the times a dinner didn't work for any reason, including burning, seasoning, or anything else.)
Last night, everything was done with loving intention, which kind of mirrored the final episode of the best television show ever. And it worked.
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I got a little note from Michelle Ross, out at Ella Bella Farm, which I've been wanting to revisit for a long time. (She didn't know that I had heard the terrible news that they'd lost their lease, and that a commercial strawberry grower had polluted the land immediately with pesticides.) She writes, "We moved just a quarter mile down the road and we are currently farming 17 very diverse acres. We grow berries along with many different types of vegetables and the dry-farmed tomatoes that we are are known for at the farmer's markets. I hope that you can find us on your next trip to Corralitos." Michelle and Brandon have a great story: they both come from farming families. I'm looking forward to a visit soon. (Thank you, Michelle, for writing.)
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Finally, Chef Farid Zadi asked me to write a piece for his wonderful multi-cultural food blog, Ya Rayi Our Rai. I have joined the likes of Paula Wolfert, Monica Bhide, and Michael Ruhlman in being invited: Farid is so immensely likeable and well-respected for his writing and wit that I'm sure he'd be impossible to refuse. At any rate, he asked me to write a little about farms, and so I did: "Nothing Prettier than a Farm." Ya Rayi Our Rai is filled with what I would call fragrant writing.
Thanks for stopping by.
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THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity. —Christopher Morley
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